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Thomas Wittman digs to find the gopher burrow to place his Macabee traps. It's hard work and he prefers the cinch traps which are simply placed in the surface openings.
Thomas Wittman of Ben Lomond is an expert on gopher control. He uses non-chemical techniques and demonstrates his work at the UC Santa Cruz farm. Event in Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Michael Maloney

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Thomas Wittman digs to find the gopher burrow...

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After digging to find the burrow, Thomas Wittman places two Macabee traps - one in each hole, and then covers the hole.
Thomas Wittman of Ben Lomond is an expert on gopher control. He uses non-chemical techniques and demonstrates his work at the UC Santa Cruz farm. Event in Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Michael Maloney

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After digging to find the burrow, Thomas...

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Top : a pair of cinch gopher traps (needs to be used in pairs)
Bottom : a Macabee trap Thomas Wittman of Ben Lomond is an expert on gopher control. He uses non-chemical techniques and demonstrates his work at the UC Santa Cruz farm. Event in Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Michael Maloney

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Top : a pair of cinch gopher traps (needs to be...

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The cinch trap is armed and placed at the entrance to a gopher hole.
Thomas Wittman of Ben Lomond is an expert on gopher control. He uses non-chemical techniques and demonstrates his work at the UC Santa Cruz farm. Event in Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Michael Maloney

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The cinch trap is armed and placed at the...

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Photo: Michael Maloney

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A pocket gopher shows it's massive incisors.
Thomas Wittman of Ben Lomond is an expert on gopher control. He uses non-chemical techniques and demonstrates his work at the UC Santa Cruz farm. Event in Santa Cruz, CA
Photo by Michael Maloney / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Several 8-by-10-inch photos of Thomas Wittman's 11-year-old daughter adorn the walls of his office at the UC Santa Cruz farm. The girl is casual and beautiful as she holds a chicken, emerges from a pool and bends toward a puppy. Alongside her hang a nearly equal number of glossies of a gopher.

In one, the gopher has its head raised and its four incisors at the ready in what Wittman calls, "a classic gopher shot."

His fondness for his two subjects is apparent.

In fact, Wittman's daughter and gophers are closely linked in his life. Wittman is part owner of Molino Creek Farm in Davenport on the coast in northern Santa Cruz County. When his daughter was born, Wittman wanted to augment his farm income and hired on as operations manager at the UC Santa Cruz organic farm. Teaching workshops on managing gophers without using chemicals led to his wearing a third hat, that of part owner of Gophers Limited in Ben Lomond, which provides nontoxic gopher management services.

Wittman's gopher expertise is in ever-increasing demand. More farmers are converting acres to organic management. As they do, they have to find new ways to manage gophers without resorting to the poisons and toxic gases used by conventional farmers. Meanwhile, homeowners and school boards are also increasingly seeking nontoxic control to reduce exposure to pesticides.

Wittman introduced a male gopher that he had temporarily housed in a bucket of grasses and soil. The gopher looks like a miniature long-tailed beaver with immediate appeal lent by big cheeks, whiskers and buckteeth. His body was plump, 8 to 10 inches long, and covered in sleek fur that keeps him dry even in damp soil. Fur-lined pockets on the outside of the gopher's cheeks serve as grocery bags for carrying food, and his lips close behind his teeth rather than in front to keep dirt out of his mouth as he burrows.

You've got to admire a creature whose belly drags on the ground when it stands tall but who nonetheless stands his ground. As Wittman discussed the gopher's features, the gopher tried to set his incisors into anything within reach: Wittman's leather-gloved hand, sticks, our shoes, the photographer's camera. "Hey look at this. This is really incredible," said Wittman with a chuckle as the gopher snapped yet another small branch in two.

"As you can see, the gopher is a pretty cool creature that is only a problem when there is a conflict over land use," he said.

Such a conflict exists at the UC Santa Cruz farm and on any farm where both the farmer and the gopher want to gather a harvest. Gophers are congregating now in the farm's upper strawberry beds and orchards, seeking drier ground after early winter rains as well as the off-season food that perennial roots supply. The gopher's ability to chew through even large tree and grapevine roots means its economic impact can be huge. It's one thing to lose a row of lettuce and another thing altogether to lose established vines and trees. A toppled tree is enough to turn even the most tolerant organic farmer into a trapper.

The fresh dirt mounds and open holes beneath the farm's now-barren apple trees signal activity underground. A gopher's burrow can extend into an area 20 feet by 10 feet and will contain food caches, nests, dumps for feces, and sump holes to help prevent flooding. When a gopher is working on its burrow, it keeps a hole open on the surface to which it will return every few minutes to push out excess dirt. When the gopher is finished digging nearby, it plugs the hole with dirt.

Because a gopher continually returns to an open-surface hole while it is expanding its burrow, it is relatively easy to trap using a device called a cinch trap. The trap is set and simply poked down into the opening. When the gopher returns to push out more dirt, it trips a mechanical sensor, and the trap snaps the gopher's neck, killing it instantly. The cinch trap can be reset in a minute or less and doesn't require digging. Its ease and efficiency make nontoxic gopher control viable even for farmers with large acreages and for homeowner associations with extensive landscaping.

It is more difficult to trap a gopher that has settled into its burrow. Without open holes for a cinch trap, a trapper must dig through 15 to 30 inches of soil to find a main tunnel, then set an in-line trap in the hope of catching the gopher as it makes its rounds of the burrow. One of the most common tunnel traps is the Macabee trap.

As we tour Wittman's trap line, he points out the other means of gopher control: An orange cat prowls under a bush, and a nesting box for barn owls is set atop a tall pole in the kiwi orchard. Gophers, which often forage on the surface during the night, are a barn owl's dietary mainstay. An adult barn owl will consume roughly 1,000 gophers a year. However, because barn owls can range up to 2 miles from the nesting box during their night hunts, it is not uncommon to find a gopher hole directly beneath a nesting box. A series of nesting boxes spread throughout a neighborhood or rural area will provide overlapping coverage and have a greater impact on the gopher population than will a single box.

This year Wittman is testing whether enclosing a garden bed with a perimeter of semi-rigid plastic sheeting that extends from 6 inches above the ground to 30 inches underground will keep out gophers. "The theory is that when gophers hit a barrier while they are tunneling, they tend to go along it rather than under it," Wittman said. "And they're not good climbers."

As we walk, Wittman clears sprung cinch traps and tucks expired gophers gently back down into their burrows. "Fertilizer," he said. Asked about catch-and-release programs, Wittman said the time involved in trapping and transporting gophers without hurting them makes catch-and-release unrealistic on a farm scale.

Even in a home garden, "nonviolent" gopher reduction is difficult. Traps must be closely monitored and the animals carefully tended because gophers can quickly die of exposure if left aboveground too long. Meanwhile, Wittman hasn't found much to substantiate the efficacy of leaving Juicy Fruit gum in the burrows (under the theory the gophers can't digest it), nor of various soundmakers or vibrating mechanisms. Drenching the burrows with castor oil or fish emulsion can encourage the gophers to move over to the neighbors for a while, but they usually return all too soon.

And the fate of the gopher waiting back in the bucket in Wittman's office? "After I take a few more pictures and do a little filming," Wittman said, "I'll find him a meadow where he won't do any harm."

Gopher control workshop

Controlling gophers, moles and voles without poisons: This workshop introduces the basic biological facts about burrowing pests. It will cover various kinds of barriers, flooding, blasting, soundmakers, mythical remedies and trapping. Trapping techniques will be discussed, including a new approach that requires little or no digging, and demonstrated.

Need more help? Thomas Wittman will share his expertise in controlling gophers and other vertebrate garden pests from 10 a.m. to noon July 22 at the Louise Cain Gatehouse on the UCSC Farm. $15 for members of the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden; $20 for nonmembers, payable at the workshop. Call (831) 459-3240 or e-mail jonitann@ucsc.edu for more information, or see www.ucsc.edu/casfs.

Gophers appear to love crabgrass roots. Eliminating crabgrass will take away an incentive for a gopher to move in.

When planting a new lawn, consider putting wire beneath the sod to minimize gopher damage. The wire will be effective, however, only if 3 to 4 inches of soil is placed on top of the wire before the sod goes on. If the wire is placed directly under the sod, gophers will simply dine on the grass roots from the other side of the "fence."